


Messy

by redtoblack



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Post-Episode: s04e13 No Better To Be Safe Than Sorry, Quentin Coldwater Lives, they're working on it., things are better but the boys have a long way to go.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28518696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redtoblack/pseuds/redtoblack
Summary: Quentin's back, the Monster's gone, everyone is more or less okay. Well, they're alive, and with no big quests or threats looming, they can just relax and recover.Now the only question is - how the fuck does that work?
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 10
Kudos: 26
Collections: Peaches and Plums Stockings 2020





	Messy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheAudity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAudity/gifts).



> Two bros sitting on a park bench 0 feet apart as they try vaguely to regain humanity. I surprised myself with how much fun it was writing them like this! Hope it's as fun to read!
> 
> Thank you grimweather for the beta!

“Nerdy pink jacket with the jewel pop-socket. Go.”

“Um, she’s texting her mom. A friend was supposed to meet her by the subway, but they never showed, and now she’s stuck on the sidewalk without an umbrella. But she has Daddy’s pre-paid card in her pocket, so she’s not actually all that worried.”

“Mm. Poor little muggle girl.”

Smoke exits lungs through pursed, chapped lips, taking its place in the maelstrom of city air with swirling indifference.

“Your turn. Three-piece suit and sideburns, in a rush — no, that one, over there.”

“Hmm. Late for another meeting, are we? This one slept too long at his mistress’ place last night, and has already argued with his wife too many times for her to think it’s nothing. If word gets out at the company barbecue that he’s been coming in late again after she didn’t hear him come home, he simply can’t bear to think on the repercussions.”

A frown, but a bored tone. “You think she’ll divorce him?”

“Oh, no. Obviously she’d just take a lover of her own, as revenge.”

“Right. Who next?”

“Let’s go with...that one. In the rainbow rubber boots. Bonus if you’ve got a backstory for that fashion sense.”

“They clearly used to be a model, look at that gait. But they hated all the designs they had to wear, and one day they just threw in the towel and walked out on their contract. Now they’ve been out of a job for months, but they kept the clothes they walked out in, and wear them as a point of pride.”

“Nicely executed.”

“Thank you. Your next target is that one, with the snake tattoos and the guyliner.”

“Did you seriously just assault my ears with the word —”

“Shut up, just do it.”

A sigh, an assessing look, and an acrid inhale of smoke. “Hedge. Got kicked out of Brakebills, doesn’t remember a thing except that life feels like it’s missing its spark. Turned junkie, willing to do anything for the next hit of heroin or magic, whichever comes around first to make that sad, worthless life feel like it means something again.”

A pause, and Quentin turns on the bench next to him, frown audible. “Too far, El. Knock it off.”

“Oh.” Right. “Sorry.” That makes sense, now that he thinks about it, crushing the dying end of his cigarette on the cold metal of the bench. “Thanks.” It’s bitter, but he means it.

That’s the other reason they’re doing this, after all. The one that he doesn’t say to Kady, or Julia, or Alice, when they go out. Not even to Margo, except when he is very, very drunk, and then afterwards she pretends he didn’t.

It’s not like he and Q _talk_ about it, either. Not after that first session with Nell where it all began. They just do it, and pretend like hell that they’re trying to be worse, not get better.

It takes two to tango, like it takes two to make a fairy deal, two to keep a secret, two or more to fall in love, two axes to make a set. Two for one to be lost while the other brings them back. And two, apparently, to keep each other in check.

When they’re at the penthouse, company pressing in on all sides, and Quentin says something cutting and remorseless and wrong, like _Well good for you Jules, you can keep your friend alive after he’s already killed himself,_ Eliot sits quietly. The others are the ones to cool him off, talk him down, have a little heart-to-heart that ends in tears and apologies.

Out here in the noise and the filth and the free, stinging air, when he says things like _It’s your fault we lost Teddy,_ Eliot can calmly respond with _Fuck off, Quentin,_ and he just nods, and Eliot can see the little scribbles of his thoughts as he takes note of it. And then, of course: when Eliot makes brilliant, absurd deductions like _that person looks like someone who turns tricks for drugs and magic,_ Quentin can tell him when to stop. And Eliot doesn’t keep a notebook of it like Q does, doesn’t ponder and rephrase for clarity and doodle in the margins with thoughts about magic and morality, but he does take notice. Every rule that Quentin gives him, every amendment as they reteach each other how to be human — they drip through him, sliding in through the sound vibrations in his ears and oozing down the back of his throat (sometimes tar and sometimes honey) and mingling somewhere around his spine into his bloodstream, and then they beat through his heart and his mind and his hands that can touch and break and hold and his mouth that can speak and curse and kiss and breathe in and breathe out and tell Quentin what it is like to live by his word.

Nell would say it’s a little codependent. But then they’d probably also shrug and say that nothing’s perfect and if it’s helping, it’s better than the alternative.

So Quentin says _too far_ and _knock it off_ and Eliot says _oh_ and _sorry_ and _thanks._ And it’s graciously just them, alone on a bench, surrounded by the world, and this is what they do, and there is nothing more to say.

Eliot shifts. A fresh cigarette vanishes from the pack in his pocket and reappears in his hand, lit. He breathes in and breathes out.

“What about that one by the streetlamp? With the clunky headphones?”


End file.
